REYKJAVIK, 19 January 2008 — Bobby Fischer, America’s first and only world chess champion, who beat the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in a blaze of Cold War publicity in Reykjavik in 1972, has died in Iceland at the age of 64.
A spokesman for Fischer, who was feted as a national hero for beating Spassky but fell foul of US authorities in his later years, confirmed that the chess genius had died of kidney failure.
Rumors that Fischer, once dubbed the “Mozart of Chess,” had been ill had circulated in recent weeks on chess-related websites. Iceland national radio reported he had died after a serious illness. He was said to have an IQ higher than Albert Einstein’s.
Fischer, a child prodigy who once said he liked to watch his opponents squirm and who had become an Icelandic citizen, could have faced jail in the United States for violating sanctions on former Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there with Spassky.
Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov hailed Fischer as the pioneer and the father of professional chess.
Kasparov said he had followed the 1972 clash of the US and Soviet titans closely. “Fischer’s chess was so fresh and so new... We all grew up under the strongest impression of Fischer’s victories,” he told Sky News television.
“From an ideological stance, it was the fight of an individual against a totalitarian system. He had a lot of supporters even in the Soviet Union. No one viewed him as an American fighting Soviets, it was more a great man fighting the mighty machine,” Kasparov said.
Spassky, who now lives in Paris, was less eloquent on the subject of his old adversary. Asked by reporters for his reaction, he replied: “It’s bad luck for you. Bobby Fischer is dead.”
The brilliant and unpredictable American abandoned his world title without moving a pawn by failing to defend his crown in Manila in 1975. World chess authorities reluctantly awarded it to challenger Anatoly Karpov of the Soviet Union, who was to hold it for the next decade.
Fischer withdrew into himself, not playing in public and living on little more than the magic of his name, although millions of enthusiasts regarded him as the king of chess.
He made headlines when he came out of seclusion to play Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, at a time when the country was the target of sanctions during Belgrade’s war with breakaway republics.
He vanished after the match, for which he won $3 million, and resurfaced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. In an interview with a Philippine radio station, Fischer praised the strikes and said he wanted to see America wiped out.
Fischer always had a high opinion of himself. Asked who was the greatest player in the world, he once replied: “It’s nice to be modest, but it would be stupid if I did not tell the truth. It is Fischer.”
He gained a reputation for being cocky. He told interviewers his favorite moment was when opponents began to feel they would lose. “I like to see them squirm,” he said.
